COMPLAINTS AT LIC AGENTS ISSUING MISLEADING ADVERTS

India’s insurance regulator IRDA has criticised Indian’s leading life assurer, LIC, for allowing its agents to print and circulate misleading advertisements. IRDA said that the state-owned assurer gad violated the new unit-linked insurance policy (ULIP) guidelines by promising values that the recently relaunched ULIPS did not promise. IRDA’s regulations require that all advertisements, flyers and posters be approved by IRDA and monitored by the insurer. LIC noted that it had 100,000 agents, and, although it sends periodical warning and notices to its agents forbidding them from producing their own marketing literature, monitoring all of them proved difficult. LIC said that it would be monitoring agents more closely in future.